In Montreal today meeting with some potential partners for Curve and came across what might be one of my favorite TED talks of all time; and I watch a lot of TED.
In his talk, Simon Sinek does a brilliant job at breaking down the difference between good companies and great companies, good leaders and great leaders. He essentially argues that there are only two ways to make change happen: you can manipulate it, or you can inspire it… and that inspiring it is the only sustainable way to go.
He goes on to argue that to inspire change, whether it is bringing on the right people, customers, investors, creating beautiful products or whatever, you need to focus your efforts on WHY you exist as opposed to WHAT it is you do.
Seems like a simple idea, but how many companies do you interact with that deliver on this simple concept? When I think of most companies I buy products from, they don’t inspire me. In fact, I usually come away feeling jaded, feeling like they only exist to exploit or profit off of me, and definitely not that they truly care about making things better for me.
At Curve, it’s simple. We exist because at the very core, we want to make dentists lives better. Software? Well that just happens to be our medium for making it happen. What we make is irrelevant. When we’re building our products this is what keep keeps me up at night. Are we delivering on our promise? Are we making people’s lives better? When people are talking about us in the market THIS is what we want them talking about, not just some shiny new feature we made. If we make money but don’t make people’s lives better in the process we’ll have failed.
So, what could you or your company be doing to inspire change? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you exist? Do your employees know WHY? Do they feel it? Do they bleed orange?
